The first time Banda Sunato killed, he was fifteen.

It wasn’t planned—at least, not in the way most people imagine murder to be. There were no intricate schemes, no premeditated malice. It was simply an opportunity that presented itself, and Banda, ever the observer, had always been curious about human nature.

His victim was a classmate, a boy who never learned when to keep his mouth shut. Banda had always been the quiet one in the back of the room, the type people overlooked until it was too late. The boy had pushed too far, called him strange one too many times. And so, one evening, Banda followed him home, watched the boy’s movements, and decided to test a theory: how fragile was the human body?

The answer came in the form of suffocation. Not quick, not efficient, but slow and intimate. Banda felt the pulse beneath his fingers, the desperate gasps for air, the way the body resisted before giving in. It was… fascinating.

And it was easy.

That was the real revelation—not the act of killing itself, but how effortlessly one life could be taken.

From that day forward, Banda understood two things: one, society was built on the illusion of safety; and two, he could do anything as long as he was careful.

So he continued his observations, refined his methods. He learned that people were predictable, that they gave themselves away in the tiniest of gestures. The slight tremor in a liar’s voice, the twitch of a guilty man’s fingers—Banda noticed it all. He honed his ability to manipulate, to pull people apart without them ever realizing they were unraveling.

By the time he entered the Borderland, he had already stopped seeing humans as individuals. They were simply puzzles, experiments waiting to be solved.

And when the first game demanded blood, Banda did what he had always done best—he adapted.

He smiled. He watched.

And when the moment came, he killed again.

Because, in the end, wasn’t that what the world had always been? A playground for the ones who knew how to survive?